GEMBA7-OBSession 8 & 9 Vinodh Sankaran Learning Journal

Change is everywhere and change is needed on our day to day life. Change in organization and stress management is the topic which I am going to discuss in this blog. All the organization will go for change either in organization structure or on their product even though they are running in profit or loss. If the organization do change in management, outsourcing, immigration, demographic..etc are successfully enforced then corresponding organization may see a drastic change in their outcome. If the organization do the right change in their product or service then they will do great in global market for example if you take Microsoft when their product vista was struggling and found very hard to compete with their competitors. Microsoft launched the windows 7 which was a successful product.

All the organization will change themselves and quickly adhere to new technology in the market. The changes made in the organization should be communicated and educated to all the stakeholders. The responsible manager should make sure that he should build support and commitment from his employees once the change is done and also he should select the people for job who is ready to accept the change and develop positive relationship. There are several approaches to managing change but I personally like Lewin's Three Step Change Model which is Unfreezing , movement and refreezing. I had planned to implement this model among my team and let me see how it works. But my personal approach is to get feedback from your employees when ever there is change is implemented so that we can come to know how much successful the change was implemented.

Changes will often create stressful situation to individuals who are associated with the change. But stress is everywhere it is a part of life. If you manage the stress properly it will keep you strong physically and mentally. There are lots of ways to control stress one can do yoga or workout in gym for 60 min per day will keep your mind fresh always. Organization have to implement a stress relief training program to all his employees so that employees will be trained to handle the high priority jobs without any stress or pressure.

Last week I had my last Organizational Behavior class. I had an opportunity to do the simulation project with Clifton my friend on the organizational behavior topic. It was totally a new experience for me and I felt it was very lively. Throughout the course I personally I like the lecture on Motivation. It was really good and I had more fun in the class and also the motivational project which we did gave us more insight about how to approach the motivational concepts in the organization. Once again I personally thank my Professor "Dr.Nagao" for teaching me all soft skills. I enjoyed his class and all the football chat with him. Because of him only my writing skill got improved. I hope all had enjoyed my blog. I will be continue writing more on Business and Management skills. Please be free to visit my blog and be free to give me feedback. Happy X-Mas and New year.

Thanks

Vino

GEMBA7-OBSession 7 Vinodh Sankaran Learning Journal

World is full of culture. Each country has variety of culture and it varies among state also. If you take India each state in India have different culture. In the modern world business is becoming more global so its good to know about country culture. Our topic today is almost same but I am going to share my view of culture which exists in organization. There is no common definition for organization culture. It is the culture which was developed by the corresponding organization for many years based on their values and its employees are encouraged to follow it. Organization have their own culture and it varies based on generation also. Organization culture is the basement of the organization. If one organization has strong culture then its success is guaranteed.

Its true that strong organization culture will leads to more profit but how to find out whether the organization culture is strong or weak. In my case AT&T's employee has same opinion on the culture so its organization culture is very strong it is the main reason for AT&T to be top a company in telecommunication sector. The culture in AT&T is customer focused with strong innovation, care for employees, passion to work, aggressiveness and customer satisfaction. Our top executives played a key role in developing this strong culture because in early 1990 AT&T had a monopoly attitude culture and AT&T did a smooth transition of this monopoly culture to the strong culture which exists today by strengthening the hiring process to recruit a workforce with passion to work and team oriented.

Socialization program also plays a major role in organization culture. There are lots of formal and informal ways a manager will communicate with his employees depending up on the situation. I always like to combine the formal and informal method to communicate with my employees. But in big organization like AT&T socialization is not much practiced. I personally encouraged socialization program inside the organization which will give an opportunity for a new employee to learn about the organization culture within short period of time and it also give an networking opportunity to employees so that they can achieve promotion or some other new job inside the organization itself.

As a manager I would always encourage an organization to develop a strong culture which will lead to success and earn more profit. I hope you all had enjoyed my blog on organization culture. I am happy to share with you all my team Clemson had won the "ACC championship" after 20 years. Hope they will be national champion team next year. All have a good day.

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Vinodh Sankaran

GEMBA7-OBSession 6 Vinodh Sankaran Learning Journal

How much power do you have in your organization? Do power changes the personal behavior?Power is one of the very sensitive topic to debate. One can do anything if he has right power. A leader is the one who has more power in an organization but where does the power come from. Power comes to individual in many ways though promotions, business needs,passion to work, ample amount of experience etc. A true leader will handle the power in the smooth way without any ego or attitude and make sure he takes care of his people. Mahatma Gandhi had more power but he used his power perfectly and lead his people in amazing manner. Through gaining unique knowledge, social influence one can increase the power in an organization.

Power can change anything in an organization. An informal usage of power will leads to political behavior in an organization. But this politics will leads to advantages in some cases and disadvantages to many cases. My personal opinion there is politics everywhere an individual should be smart so that he should get adjust to the politics in an organization. A great leader will only focus on things which benefit to organization he won't think about any political behavior which can leads to him trouble, puts the organization in jeopardy situation and sets an wrong example to the people who are following him. It also leads to conflict situation among peer employees. How much power you receive in your organization always respect your colleagues which will increase your value among them.

There are lots of universal influence we follow in our day to day life. Negotiation plays major role in our life. Negotiation skills varies among individuals. Take an used car selling example one has to use all his negotiation skills to get the best deal from the dealer. Reciprocity and liking are the negotiation tactics which I use in my office. Its hard to get success while negotiating deals. Negotiation is not about one who wins the argument its kind of an art which comes by experience and personal interest. Hope you all enjoyed my blog this weekend I am going to Clemson-GA Tech game and I guess Clemson will win the game easily. All have a wonderful day.

Thanks

Vino

GEMBA7-OBSession 4 & 5 Vinodh Sankaran Learning Journal

Hi all! Weekend went so fast as I was busy with my school and the whole world was in shock after losing one of the greatest innovative leader "Steve jobs". Steve is the main reason for all the innovative products introduced by the apple. The way steve managed his groups and teams has played the key role in apple's success in global market. He structured the apple team perfectly with clear picture, roles and assignment. Steve was a bold leader I always admire his style of leadership. Steve's presentation in all "Apple worldwide developer conference" showed the confidence he had on his team.

Past weekend in my MBA class I got an opportunity to see a video on Erik Weihenmayer who was a blind person climbed the mount everest with help of super effective team. This shows that if you have a team with unified goal and great leader you can convert impossible to possible. I really want to thank my professor "Dr.Nagao" for sharing this great video. I am planning to share this on my team meeting and going to get my team members feedback. It is always challenging to manage virtual teams since they are not available in person. But if you have right team members with good technology and tools then we can manage virtual teams at ease. I am equipping myself on this area because I will be managing virtual global teams soon.

Are Leaders are born or made? this is debate going for many years. Let's not dive in to that debate. In my opinion leader is the pillar for the organization some of the great leaders are Steve jobs, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela,..etc they all have different leadership styles. Even in sports a coach is the leader who can change the team structure. Clemson University head coach "Dabo Swinney" has changed the Clemson football team in to a champion team. All he did is he brought the right team members and believes his team 100% thats how the true leader should be one should keep faith on his team, trust them and form a bond between them. But there are many leadership styles followed in sports too if you take coach knight former basketball head coach very famous for strict discipline style of leadership yet he is a successful coach with many championship tittles in his resume.

Leadership skills depends up on individuals attitude and character. In future I like to become a good leader who takes care of his people and believes his people. I hope all enjoyed my blog leadership. I am enjoying my MBA classes I will share all my thoughts which I learned from the class through this blog so please read the blog frequently and let me know your thoughts.

Thanks

Vino

GEMBA7-OBSession3 Vinodh Sankaran Learning Journal

Am I paid enough? Is my job interesting? Am I happy with my Job? These are common questions which arises in everyone's day to day life. Today my post is about "Motivation". How often are you motivated in your work place or in life? Motivation is the key factor through which employees and organization achieve their goals. In my case recognition, job satisfaction, promotions, awards, family, job interest, needs, feedback and money are the key factors which motivates me to work. Motivating factors depends up on individual's interest and needs. Even a strong motivational speech can make a huge difference locker room speech given by the football coaches before the national championship game or take the famous Steve jobs motivational speech on graduation ceremony at Stanford University in 2005(Thanks to Stanford.edu). I always motivate my team members so that they can foster the productivity.

Each organization follows their own style of motivating factors to motivate their employees. A competitive salary package, bonuses, health benefits, employee discounts, tuition aid, job rotation and awards are some of the key motivational factors which AT&T uses to motivate their employees. We also use Goal setting theory in our organization. A common smart goal is developed and it is converted in to individuals' goal based on their organization needs and interest. All our quarterly incentives are tied up with the goals and market performance. So we get bonuses every quarter, which psychologically boost the moral of employees.

In my organization to avoid the monotonous and job boredom we introduced job rotation program among the organization where an employee will be rotated every 18 months to different jobs to different teams. This had not only avoided the boredom it also educated the employee in all aspects and made them more powerful. I always motivate my team members regularly by giving thank you card, honest feedback, taking lunch often, birthday cakes, hosting super bowl potluck, gift coupons etc. In case of any family emergencies or severe weather I allow my employees to telecommute or be flexible with work hours, which will encourage to work with positive mind. I also allow my employees to take decision during key time, which will morally motivate them at work I learned this art from my manager Marcus. Motivation is one of the sensitive and key factor in an organization I hope you all enjoyed my view of motivation.

Both my teams Georgia Tech and Clemson University are 4-0 as of now I hope they will be unbeaten until they meet on october 29th at GA tech. Please be free to give me feedback about my blog. See you all soon with my next post.

Thanks

Vino

GEMBA7-OBSession2 Vinodh Sankaran Learning Journal

A person to succeed in his job he should be first satisfied with what he is doing. He should give heart and soul to his work. In simple words he should be satisfied with his job then only it will be win-win case for individual and also for the organization. I will make sure my team members are always happy with their projects assigned and also highly satisfied with what they are doing. As a manager I always knew my team members interest and needs and I will assign jobs based on that.If an employee is not satisfied with the job he is involved that will spoil the team environment because the particular employee may not be loyal and honest to his team members.

To be frank even if I am not satisfied with my job it will create a negative mood and emotions permanently. I always prefer to do "Sport or Casual Chat" on every monday morning and make my people happy with little humor so that a positive mood will be created before they get in to their job. Sometimes I personally sacrifice my emotions and mood for my team. If my mood is not good because of personal or health issues I will sacrifice it and will prepare myself to be in good mood because it makes huge difference. I personally like people who thinks positive, open minded, open to innovative thinking because it not only improve their performance at work it will also increase the team members mood and confidence.

How to find the positive people? A personality test will try to help manager to identify the character and attitude of his team members. Few weeks before I got an opportunity to take personality tests IPIP-NEO and Myers-Briggs type inventory (MTBI) background. I am so impressed with the end product because both the results resembles the mirror image of my character and attitude. This helped me to understand more about myself. I would like to introduce these tests to my team members so that I can get a chance to know more about my team members that would help me to create a positive vibration among my team. These two test are also depends on people mood and emotion if they are in negative mood and emotions the result will vary so it is highly recommended to take these tests in good mood.

Based on the MTBI test result I am a ENFJ(Extraversion, Intuition, feeling and judging)personality person. In order to have diverse team I would prefer to have different personality person with positive mind in my team and these two tests will help me to achieve that goal. But judging people is also one of the challenging job for manager. A manager may have his own style of judging people but I prefer to judge people based on the situation with my honest heart and take decision after a thorough research. Decision making plays a major role for human in all aspect of life. For example if you wanna buy a used or new you have to do thorough research and make a decision. Managers will be having their own style of judging and decision making model to find and hire the positive people.

Even though you have positive people in your team it all depends up on "Motivational Factors" you follow in the team which will produce a fantastic result. So my next blog will be on "Motivation" catch you all soon. Be free to give a feedback.

Thanks

Vino

GEMBA7-OBSession1 Vinodh Sankaran Learning Journal

One of the important characteristic of manager is "Soft Skills" which is also called "People Skills". People skill is like an art and learning it will be very challenging task. A manager can be very strong in technical path but if he lags in people skill then his productivity will be affected. The main objective of the Organization behavior(OB) is to improve the people skills for managers. Organization behavior will focuses on groups, individuals and structure in an organization so that the profit can be increased. When my Professor Dr.Nagao discussed about the Volley ball in the class I was totally surprised because I basically learned all the team work basics from my favorite sport cricket. Cricket is basically a team sport if an group or individual or structure of team is not strong enough then team will lose the match(Thanks to Cricbuzz.com for the team picture).

The main aim of the manager in an organization is placing the right people at the right job but how the manager can identify his team members strength and weakness. Working in AT&T as business manager I interviewed my people individually and got their strengths and weaknesses by asking them "Best and Worst" day at work. Developing trust and confidence in the team will leads to better productive work ambience. I would always connect the people within my team and make sure they get maximum benefit from each other. This concept has been implemented in our organization as "One AT&T". It is really difficult to read people's mind but I would say once you learn this art it would make you a perfect leader in future.

As we discussed about "What great managers do" assuming I am one of the manager and want to add up on a point that a team should be diverse. It is not welcomed to have same kind of people within the team they should be unique from each other. I have a great team and I achieve my goals every project its all because of my team and their positive attitudes. Attitudes matter the most for a person. A manager should handle his employees in such way that there should not be any negative attitudes created among his team members. The power of attitudes can break the team and also the productivity. I always think positive attitude is one of the key to success.

Every human has emotions and its the responsible for the manager in organization that his team members emotions are not affected because it will create negative attitude among his team members which lead to a bad behavior in work environment and affects the organization massively. I will engage my employees to the project with their interest so that they will be motivated, involved in the job and also have positive attitude which will make them to achieve the job satisfaction. As I told you earlier that I compare team work with the sport so "Team work always win the game".Hope you all enjoyed my blog on Organization behavior introduction and Attitudes. Please be free to share your comments and thoughts

Thanks

Vino